Over at TechCrunch, Sarah Buhr and Connie Loizos report that San Francisco seed-stage venture firm Rothenberg Ventures may be in trouble. Several staffers have left, the company’s site is down, and one of TechCrunch’s sources says the company is under investigation by the SEC.

The article is full of details about company founder Mike Rothenberg, who it describes as a big-spending, Gatsby-like character. My favorite tidbit:

They also say Rothenberg began to spend an inordinate amount of time managing his reputation, as questions began to surface around how he afforded it all. When Bloomberg last year questioned the firm’s ability to finance itself, Rothenberg sent two employees to SFO, purchasing them airline tickets so they could head to airport newsstands and buy copies of the issue in hopes that it wouldn’t be as widely read.